monochrome
by Elyserie
Summary: because fate doesn't decide who you love, you do.
1. flowers

_Chapter One: Flowers_

When I was little, my dad would always bring back flowers. They were rare in this time period, because of pollution and all the other crap in the air. But every week, without fail, my dad would always bring some back. Once he brought a type apparently called "daisies". Another, he brought back "roses". My mom would always squeal with delight. Since they were soulmates, they could see colors.

But I couldn't.

Actually, I was completely black and white. Like a flower, when the time came, I would transform into something beautiful. But until then, I would stay hidden, oblivious to all that was happening around me.

Most people my age have already found their soulmate. It's like those ridiculous before and after ads they post on the TV. Before, they droop, sulk, and all that horseshit. But after, they have a life. They run, are animated, and just look fantastic compared to those boring kids moping around all their damn lives. In some rare cases, people of the same gender fall in love. It isn't looked down upon, but it doesn't bring you any popularity either.

I hope to be normal one day, like my parents. They fell in love and had me three years later. The ideal relationship, a happy family. Dad is the mayor of Yokohama, so we're the only ones with electricity and my parents are hella rich. In school, there are the dumb jocks, the smartass girls who want to braid my "red hair", and those nerdy glasses-wearing kids that do nothing but read every damn day of their lives.

What the _hell_ is red, anyways? A color? A scent? A feeling?

I guess they fell in love. I yearn for true love, not that paper-thin "romance" shit that's going down at my high school. They can lock lips all they want, but that isn't gonna bring them true sight. Well, except for that one girl, she's found her damn soul mate since she knows what "red" is.

But I'm still curious. What is red? Maybe I'll ask that girl tomorrow. But then again, maybe I'll lock myself in a bathroom stall, and eat my lunch seething in loneliness.

My mother is always worried that I won't ever find a soulmate. She nags constantly about my choice in clothing, my haircuts. So in the end, I'm always dressed up in these fuckboy outfits. A tophat, vest, jacket, etc. I fucking hate it all, except for the hair. It's actually not that bad, but I always end up wondering where the hell my mom gets these outfits.

Then I remember that she's married to the Mayor of Yokohama, and has probably been around this city more than most people would in a lifetime.

Thankfully, on the weekends, she doesn't give a shit on what I wear. So I don a choker, those baggy black sweaters, black jeans, and overall feel slightly better about my existence. Unless that annoying as hell, cat-obsessed neighbor, Nakajima Atsushi, comes. He eats all the rice we have. Seriously. My mom makes me dress up when he comes over, because I have to make a "good impression".

The kid's a freshman, and he's lucky enough to have a damn soulmate. His soulmate happens to be one of my old private school friends, back when my parents still made me go to "rich kid schools", as everyone calls it. Last I saw him, before I left the rich kid world, his hair was black with the tips dyed white.

Or, that was basically the description my monochrome eyes could give me. I even managed to remember his super-long name. Akutagawa Ryuunosuke.

When Atsushi brought him over a few months ago, his hair was a "dark brown", the hanging bangs slowly darkening into dip-dyed black and white.

I had to remind Atsushi that I couldn't see color, so I could not "check out" the new shade, and my mother had immediately jumped in to change the subject. She gets touchy about my not having a soulmate. Very often. I try to avoid the subject as much as I can, but seeing the lovesick couples practically waltzing down the street, hand in hand, even makes something in my heart twist.

The jealousy that follows after seeing Atsushi and Akutagawa together is too much for me to handle. Catching them making out in the bathroom when they were supposed to be "washing hands" made me sick to my stomach, as if the world had some disgusting vendetta against me. But then again, I've never experienced love, so I don't really know what is supposed to be disgusting, and what isn't.

 _But when the tongue comes out, I run._ As if the gatekeepers of hell were chasing me. _And they didn't even fucking notice._

Lucky for me, that day was months ago. Unlucky for me, memories are pretty much permanent, and I'm known for photographic memory. Emphasis on "graphic".

Honestly, though, after that incident I questioned everything in his house. Like, whose socks were those? What was in that box labeled: "Akutagawa Ryuunosuke"? Whose pants were those? Which toothbrush was who's?

Safe to say, I did not see neither Atsushi nor Akutagawa for a very, very long time after that. But, since a window to their room is across from mine, I can often see them do ordinary relationship things, such as reading books, watching movies, and doing all that horseshit together.

Sometimes, I turn away with disgust. Others, there's a deep gnawing feeling, at the pit of my stomach. All I want is for someone to love me...is that too much to ask for? I'm not deaf. I can hear my mom talking to the doctor. I can see that my dad has other priorities than taking care of his family. I can hear the hushed whispers thrown from behind me. Well, they've hit their target. Maybe I don't need someone to love. Maybe I just need to get a life of my own. Something to call mine for once.

Until that one day.

It's one of those normal 'the neighbor's coming over' days, and my mom sends me upstairs to change into a "fuckboy" outfit. I thought that it would be Atsushi coming over, so I didn't really bother to put much effort into fighting my mom in choice of clothing. Atsushi knew I hate those clothes, and so did Akutagawa. But after not very carefully combing my hair, dressing up in a rumpled three-piece suit, and pulling on mismatched socks, I knew that opening the door to find a gift from heaven was God's way of saying, " _ya done fucked up, kiddo"._

I couldn't help but feel attracted to him. He had black hair, and piercing grey eyes (they were probably a different color, but I couldn't see color.). My first instinct would have been to run my hands through the pure silk called hair on this child, but the only thing holding me back was my mom, standing in front of me and shaking hands with his mother. Before she could step aside to reveal me, I whispered "be right back" and ran faster than I ever have in my life to run back to my room and change my (now that I thought of it) horrible outfit. My back was drenched with sweat, as though I had finished running a marathon. I felt as if the walls were closing in on me. I needed to get out of here.

But not in these clothes.

I practically flew to my closet, while tearing off my clothes in the process. Gasping for air, I stopped for a moment, before slipping into a pair of jeans, and stripped off my shirt. At this point, I was heaving up dry air. The loneliness and depression that had surrounded me all these years formed a wall. All along the periphery of my vision, darkness had taken over. I collapsed on the floor, slowly curling in on myself. My bones felt too tired to move.

Why?

Why was I so exhausted? I'd barely ran, and my lungs felt like indulging in suicide.

Then the door opened, and an unfamiliar tune met my ears as the teenage hot mess came walking into my room, his lips pursed in an effort to keep humming. A single index finger was held up from his right hand, and he took a single step into the room.

Then I realized.

I. Didn't. Have. A. Shirt. On.

 _Fuck._

As if realizing my obvious discomfort, the boy's eyes flew open, and his brow creased. "Hey, this isn't the bathroom..."

"WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU IN MY ROOM?" My lungs suddenly found the energy to scream, and I grabbed the nearest piece of fabric to cover my skinny, scarred, and bare chest.

"Uhm, I guess that I took a wrong turn…" he replied in a slightly singsong tone, as if it was everyday he walked in on people changing their clothes. _He even had the cheekiness to smile._

 _Then he actually took another step into my room and began to_ fucking _speak._

"Hey, you don't look too bad," he whispered, still smiling the cheeky-ass grin with his perfect white teeth. And those lips. Okay, I had to stop. I wasn't in my right mind.

"OKAY, GET YOUR CHEEKY ASS OUTTA MY FUCKING ROOM!" I screamed in response, desperately trying to find one of my sweaters or undershirts or _anything_ to cover up in front of this annoyingly perfect stranger.

Oops. A little too loud.

I heard the familiar shuffling of my mom's footsteps on the stairs.

"Everything all right, honey?"

"MOM, CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME WHY THIS MAN IS IN _MY_ ROOM?" I whispered, (as loud as I could), pulling on a sweater and not even bothering to acknowledge the fact that the subject matter of the conversation was standing right there.

My mother clucked her tongue disappointedly as she poked her head in my room, flicking the lights on and placing a hand on the mystery boy's shoulder. "Oh, Chuuya, I hope you didn't frighten Dazai-kun."

"Dazai?"

"That's my name," the boy said, flashing a smile and a wink. For some reason, both his arms, parts of his hands, and his neck were covered in bandages. "I don't think we were properly introduced. My name's Dazai Osamu."

"Dazai's going to be staying with us for a bit," my mother interrupted, to my horror."He lives outside the city, but is taking his final year of high school here in Yokohama before heading off to college. Everything's arranged with his parents already, isn't that fun, Chuuya?"

"Chuuya?" Dazai asked, peering at me curiously. "Is that your name?"

"Nakahara Chuuya," I muttered, avoiding his eyes.

I could tell that this was gonna be one hell of a year. And summer wasn't even over yet.


	2. memories

_Dazai_

I'm so glad. So glad I got away. From my past. From my memories. So many people think of memories as nostalgic, but I think that they're just little pieces hell, slowly creeping into your mind. Like a bunch of puzzle pieces, not fitting quite together. And it's torture thinking of everything I've been through. But I hide it all, tucked under a smile and jokes. My dead father told me once that hiding under a façade would never work, but it's worked for seventeen years.

I don't see why it wouldn't keep working. After all, my father died because of his expressions that one could read like an open book.

Of course, Chuuya's mother fell for the façade. I was slightly jealous of him- his mother cared so much about him and he seemed to not care at all, screaming at his mother to take me away. Whereas in public, my mom was the original soccer mom, but in private she was a drunken bitch, looking for any man to sleep with. Cigarette butts scattered the floors of our house, and translucent glass shards of beer bottles filled the trash.

I was expected to clean up her goddamn mess every morning, and every night she'd throw her drunken body into a pool of her own vomit and pass out. All the money that could've been used for my education, my career, my hopes and dreams, were wasted on nights of poker, and 300-dollar whiskey. But I wasn't supposed to complain. And I didn't. So every night, after she passed out, I would take some money out of her wallet, maybe two dollars, and buy a sandwich or some chips from the gas station nearest to us. I left her some food, but she never seemed to eat it, nor care that I, her never-demanding son, practically clothed and fed her every. Single. Day.

When she was really drunk, she would come to my room and cry. Sometimes a smack to the head would suffice. Then came the day when her boyfriend dumped her. This time, she took two fingers, and jammed them into my right eye. Not a word was said. Not when blood dripped down my shirt, like a waterfall. Not when I cried as she took her fingers from my eye, covered in slime and blood. Nothing. The following day, I got an infection. I couldn't see out of my right eye, because a thin layer of mold was covering it. I stayed in my room all day, fearing to go outside. My mom would only stand outside, probably wondering whether to come in. I'm glad she didn't. Because if she did, I swear to God I would've killed her. I didn't eat for days, and survived off of the tap water coming from my room's bathroom sink.

But I had a friend who became concerned when I didn't go to school for a week. His name was Oda Sakunosuke, better know as Odasaku. When he came to our house at seven at night to check on me, my mom took one of her kitchen knives and hacked every part of his body she could find in her drunken haze.

Odasaku died the next day in the hospital due to knife punctures in both lungs, and unnaturally large amounts of blood loss. My mother was charged with murder and child abuse after the police figured out what she did to me. I became basically blind in my right eye due to the infection and was forced to wear bandages around that eye for half a year due to the severity of the infection.

Afterwards, she sobered up. To protect her skin, she hired a lawyer to support her in the lawsuit started by Oda's parents. They were grieving, and they wanted something. Even a simple sorry would do. But she pleaded to insanity, and they institutionalized her for three years and, as soon as I turned eighteen, she was to fulfill a life in prison.

Six years later here we are, in a new city, looking brand new, as if our past was paper-thin. But I knew. She knew. We both know, that what happened to Oda could not be forgotten. So after rehab here she, is dropping me off at some stranger's house, practically begging them to take me in. She can have her own twisted version of fun, but I never want to see her again. Not her eyes that reeked unrestrained madness, not her pale face with her sunken eye sockets and thin cheeks.

My mother was a murderer. In about two months, when I became a legal adult, they would cart her off to prison and I would never see her again.

Lying down on the bed Chuuya's mother had so generously provided, I twisted my bandaged wrists around in the air. Bandages that hid the many scars of child abuse, bandages that hid the memory on my neck where my mother had almost killed me.

It had been months of awkward silence ever since I had moved in. There was a sort of tension in the air between Chuuya and I, but his mother was completely oblivious to the fact. It was like we were both waiting for something to happen-it didn't matter whether it was good or bad anymore. Even at school, when he passed me in the hall, we would exchange only the slightest of looks before disappearing into our classes.

But otherwise, I was surprised to see Atsushi, (a white haired child, also one of the most popular people in school) hangout with this hermit crab of a human. Then again, they were neighbors. As socially awkward as he was, there was only a small number of people who disliked Chuuya in our high school, considering how small and cute he was to the popular girls, and whoever disagreed with the popular girls got their asses kicked.

This group of Chuuya-hating monsters consisted of Ranpo, the smartest boy in school who was going to major in math in college, and Yosano, his girlfriend who was an up-and-coming doctor. They were soulmates, and also the most perfect pair for each other. They were both far too advanced for this school, and they were both extraordinarily perfect. Like, you could mess up Ranpo's hair for a good thirty seconds and it would still stay perfectly neat under his cap.

Then there was a blonde-haired senior in my mathematics and science classes: his name was Kunikida Doppo, and he spent a good part of break writing in his notebook with "ideals" taped on the cover. I once had stolen it (much to his chagrin), and read what was inside.

May I just say, gross?

After that came a freshman named Miyazawa Kenji, who lived on a farm on the outskirts of Yokohama and spent two hours on the morning commute. He disliked Chuuya for one reason and one reason only: Chuuya could keep his hat on when he couldn't. It was utterly hilarious.

Next was a small girl, no taller than Atsushi himself, named Izumi Kyouka. She had once been friends with both Chuuya and Akutagawa (surprisingly), but had somehow switched to hate Chuuya but still tolerated Akutagawa due to him being Atsushi's soulmate. She dressed in traditional Japanese clothes (kimono, sash, and all), and it was mystery to everyone in the school to what she looked like dressed in a uniform.

The last ones were Tanizaki Junichirou, his sister Naomi, and her gaggle of friends. Junichirou was one of those laid-back kids, and he was also friends with Ranpo, Kunikida, Yosano, Kyouka, and Kenji. Together, all eight or so of them made up the "We Hate Nakahara Chuuya" club.

I sat at a lunch table with Chuuya- he looked slightly peeved but was thankful for an anchor in the sea of girls who begged to sit with him. I could get why they were all so desperate. He had slightly enlarged eyes, and thin, but kind of pouty soft lips. Faint freckles were carelessly splashed around his face, and his lashes were dark and luscious. His face in general, looked as if God put extra care into creating his features.

One of the popular, Chuuya-craving girls was named Margaret Mitchell, and according to Atsushi, she'd had her eye set on Hawthorne, one of the popular boys, and had thought for six years (ever since the beginning of sixth grade), that they were soulmates. Of course, they weren't, so she went for the next hottest boy on premise.

Just watching her made me disgusted. Odasaku, if he were here, would've never approved. We would exchange glances and snort together into our disgusting cafeteria food, intertwining our fingers under the table. Margaret's sort of romance was the paper-thin shit like my mother thought our past to be. I knew what it was like to be in a real relationship, one that had been torn in half by my mother.

There was a rough shove in my side, and I turned to find Chuuya nearly on my lap, trying to pull his arm from Margaret's pertinent grasp. To be honest, I didn't hate the idea of him sitting on my lap. But a second later, Margaret was shoved off Chuuya by a pale hand, and Akutagawa haughtily sat himself down next to Chuuya, Atsushi following close behind. Higuchi, Akutagawa's former girlfriend, sat herself down on the opposite side of the table with Akutagawa's sister Gin.

Damn, Akutagawa had a shit ton of acquaintances.

"Hi, Dazai-san!" Atsushi grinned with the innocence of a sixth-grader rather than a sixteen-year old freshman. "Did you have a good day so far?"

I threw him a side grin and lowered a ramen noodle into my mouth with chopsticks. "Pretty much. But I have to keep Chuuya from getting molested, so it's been pretty rough."

In all the childhood innocence one could possess at such an age, Atsushi cocked his head to the side, raised an eyebrow, and somehow, with a completely straight face, asked: "What does 'molested' mean?"

Akutagawa snorted into his soup, trying to hide the insufferable smirk on his face. Chuuya nearly fell out of his seat, Higuchi hid her smile under her hair, and Gin put her mask back over her face and coughed, hiding her laugh.

If Odasaku were here, he'd be smiling that smile of a patient teacher and leaning down the table to educate Atsushi in the cleanest, most innocent way possible. However, I was not Oda, and therefore, Atsushi would learn this a bit differently.

I twisted my wrist into a flourish, Odasaku's ghostly smile still floating through my mind as I spoke. "Well, Atsushi, let me educate you into the beautiful world of puberty!"

The only sounds after that were chokes from around the table, and Atsushi's horrified expression staring at me for the rest of lunch.


End file.
